DISCIPLINE CONTRIBUTING TO THE SERVICE OF GOD
[p. 42] DISCIPLINE CONTRIBUTING TO THE SERVICE OF GOD
Jonah 2:1 - 10; Habakkuk 3:17 - 19; Malachi 3:16
JT The thought came to my mind this morning, and I wish to bring it before the brethren, that the service of God is cumulative; it is not a fixed thing like the service of the Establishment. The Spirit of God continues with us, and there are contributions right to the end, and particularly through discipline. These two chapters in Jonah and Habakkuk are said to be prayers and they culminate in contributions to the service of God, the service of song. They are just samples of what may be found elsewhere in the whole prophetic line, indeed in the historical side too, after David. The thought is brought forward so that we might see how we may contribute and have part in the service in that sense, and that discipline is to be regarded thus. These two chapters are doleful at the outset, but culminate in definite contributions: Jonah says, “I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of Jehovah”; and Habakkuk says, Whatever happens, however severe the discipline, the government of God, may be: “Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines ... yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places”. And then he formally hands it over, as it were, “To the chief singer” or Musician “on my stringed instruments”, that is, he had reached that elevation spiritually. And Malachi brings in the thought of sonship without the actual contribution; he suggests there would be those who feared Jehovah and who were pleasing to God, and God says, “I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him”.
[p. 43] Referring back to Exodus 4, where the subject began, Jehovah said to Pharaoh that His son should serve Him.
HPW I could not help thinking this morning of a remark J.N.D. made as to angels, that they are never said to sing and that the heart of man is tuned. Is this the way our hearts are tuned as we come into the school of God by discipline?
JT That is the way it stands here. Habakkuk’s book refers to discipline; he had come to recognise this discipline and the last chapter is said to be upon Shigionoth, the musical instruments, whatever it may mean, but it ends on Neginoth, stringed instruments, as if there is a steady progress. The first part doubtless alludes to what is oppressive and the heart is varied in its expressions, as it is with most of us; as we are in the making our notes are varied, perhaps doleful, but we gradually merge to a higher plane where there is complete deliverance and we breathe another atmosphere. Then, whatever God may allow in His discipline and government, we are unmoved. He says, “I will rejoice in Jehovah, I will joy in the God of my salvation. Jehovah, the Lord, is my strength” — a great point to reach, and it is where we are qualified to enter on assembly service when we are thus delivered.
PL Does the dry land referred to in Jonah 2:10 link up with our own territory in that way, as if the spirit of song qualified him to occupy it now?
JT The dry land would be sure footing. What variable exercises he had in the fish’s belly. Of course, we may treat his position in the great fish as symbolical of the Lord to a point, but we are speaking of it now from the standpoint of his own experience, and what it resulted in, sure ground; reaching the assembly we are on sure ground; we know where we are.
HPW As with Habakkuk, who really claims the ground as his — “my salvation”, “my strength”, “my feet”, walking upon “mine high places” — it is what he had made his own.
JT ‘There no stranger-God ...’, (76:10) quite so; it is our own territory.
B Is this on the line of all things working together for good?
JT It is so, because he was self-willed, showing how God can work out His way in spite of our wills. It was not a casual fish, but a prepared one; all the discipline and the formation of God’s people are not casual or accidental, they are all in purpose; everything is in the mind of God and ordered accordingly. In the discipline of God, although our feelings may be varied and perhaps rebellious at times, yet if a right thought is implanted in our minds and we pursue that, God brings us back to it. Jonah was thinking of holiness: he speaks of God’s holy temple. It is very different from the journey in the boat where there was self-will, getting away from the will of God too. Jonah went down to Joppa, he went down into the sides of the ship — it is all going down, and what is there in it? Sorrowful feelings! But now he is carried back in another vessel, a living vessel, and the idea of life is there, so that he is thinking of God, his mind is in the right direction, prayer, Thy holy temple, and finally he reaches the point himself.
FWO Is there a suggestion in the first part of his experience, in the fish’s belly, of another kind of going down?
JT It is in a divinely provided vessel, a living creature. The living creatures are characteristically in sympathy with God; we get them in Revelation and in Ezekiel.
HPW Is it really that God brings the great question of death right home to our souls, and is that the only way in which our wills are really broken?
JT That seems to be the thought in this chapter, going down in that sense but in [p. 45] a living vessel.
FWO Will you open up that thought a little?
JT Well, it is different from the ship in which he went to Joppa that men had made, where he had to pay his fare; he is now in the midst of life but still death is felt. The fish goes all the way; it is a divinely prepared vessel.
HPW I suppose, if it were actual death and there were no outlook beyond, he would never have been able to speak like this, but it is really in the sense, as pointed out, that he had an outlook toward the temple, the result of having an outlook beyond death.
JT Yes, it must be discipline, for he is a real child of God, as we say, and capable of going through all this in the divinely appointed vessel.
HPW Have you in mind that, if the Lord’s hand comes upon us in discipline, it is our salvation to see that it is the Lord’s hand and not merely circumstances, so that it gives us an outlook on life, instead of just death?
JT Quite so. He was three days and three nights there — it was a measure of time. It is Jehovah’s matter; that is the great thing to grasp, you are in His hands, and it is what He has prepared.
F Is that why he says, “I will look ... toward thy holy temple”?
JT Well, he has confidence in God. God knows how much we can stand and everything is measured with Him. So Jonah, it says, “prayed unto Jehovah his God” — it is his God, a very beautiful thought! He said, “I cried by reason of my distress unto Jehovah, and he answered me; Out of the belly of Sheol cried I: thou heardest my voice. For thou didst cast me into the depth, into the heart of the seas”. He is having to do with God; it is God’s matter; all is under God’s hand on a measured principle, and he said, “I am cast out from before thine eyes, yet will I look again toward thy holy [p. 46] temple. The waters encompassed me, to the soul”. It is a real thing; it is tasting the waters.
HPW And then the comfort of the thought that, “Thou heardest my voice”. It would be awful to cry and not be heard; the Lord had to know that for us, but we cry and would have the sense that we are heard.
JT Quite so. He tells us all; no doubt the germ of it was while he was in the fish’s belly, but it is a production afterwards, and therefore it was a fixed contribution. That is, I suppose, how our hymnbook was built up, but these prophetic productions are of the same order and remind us that the service of God is largely a question of singing; that is, the outcome of feelings in appointed channels in a living way.
G Chapter 1:16 says, “The men feared Jehovah exceedingly”, then the result would be seen in Jonah.
JT Well, they got something out of it. It is in Jonah that the full results are seen. He says, “I went down to the bottoms of the mountains”; then, “I remembered Jehovah; and my prayer came in unto thee, into thy holy temple” — the order is perfect.
S Does discipline stand specially in relation to service?
JT I think so. It is all in view of God, what He is working out for Himself. “Of him, and through him, and for him are all things: to whom be glory for ever” (Romans 11:36). We must come to see that. No doubt Jonah would spend some time over this, but he had the germ of it in his soul — “Jehovah his God” — he had that much before him. And the principle of holiness being worked out is so important in discipline, that I have God before me, and God knows how much I can stand, and it is all on the principle of measure, but He works out the element of holiness — in His “holy temple”, it is a very beautiful expression I think — “Jehovah his God”.
Ques How does chapter 4 come in in connection with this?
JT I suppose the best testimony we have that Jonah really profited by these things is that he wrote the book. He must have hung his head with shame when he had to write the fourth chapter after the second chapter. Why should I go back on what I have already learnt and complain about God?
PL How he should have taught them to sing in the fourth chapter! They are distressed and put on sackcloth, what a servant he might have been as a prophet! He had brought them into distress, should he not have led them in resulting song!
JT Yes; you are including the third chapter?
PL Yes. Is the servant’s work done that just leaves the soul in distress? — rightly so, maybe — but he did not bring Nineveh to the full thought of God for it in the gospel, perhaps like many an evangelist who does not bring souls on to this dry ground.
JT He certainly did not follow up his teaching. His preaching was of judgment — “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” — the preaching of judgment brought about repentance. Had he gone on with this second chapter, what a change there would have been.
PL Yes. I was thinking of the evangelists at Philippi; they went on to this in the prison and the prisoners no doubt would have been brought into it. So Paul says to the Philippians, “Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice” (Philippians 4:4).
JT What a contribution that singing in the prison was; they prayed and sang praises to God in the prison. What an impression it would make — what a God these men must have! So I suppose this second chapter is the full spiritual result possible after the experience at Nineveh. How patiently God waited on Jonah, preparing a gourd and preparing a [p. 48] worm, and then how God thought of the people in the city; all that should, and doubtless did, affect him, and enter into the book he wrote.
HPW Yes, he was a very fine evangelist, for when he finishes up in chapter 3, he goes completely out of sight. He exposes his own hardness of heart, but just leaves the matter with a beautiful expression of God, as much as to say, Now, that is really my God.
FWO So that he really learnt another kind of going down.
JT Quite so.
HPW Is not that what one would like to do in preaching the gospel, to go out of sight, but leave the soul with an impression of God he would never forget?
JT Quite so, and God takes up what He can. In the book of Job, He took up Elihu’s words. This book is a contribution, not only to the service of God, but to the prophetic ministry too, and, certainly, leaving us with God is a great matter. It is only a contribution, none of these books is a finished matter; no minister assumes that the thing he is presenting is a finished thing, he just leaves it open and other things can follow. How many evangelists have been helped by this book? The devil has attacked it and Genesis more than any other books. It is a most valuable contribution to the service of God.
W Does Jacob arrive at this at Bethel?
JT Well, he got to sure ground. He was told to go there; that is another thing, the commandment or the ordering of God comes into the Lord’s supper, and that is a principle, I think, of the house. Jacob was directed to go there, and his name was changed, but he goes further than that, he goes to Hebron, that is dry ground, that is Christ in resurrection; it is like Colossians. On the way he lost Rachel, another [p. 49] pull on his affections, another discipline. The house is not final, it is a provisional thing; it is resurrection and heaven that is the thing for us; the dry land is there.
PL Would reaching God in this way enable us to clothe men with redemption thoughts? J.N.D. has a marginal reading of verse 3 of chapter 3, as to Nineveh, saying that the word ‘great city’ is literally ‘great to God’. I was thinking of the deep feelings.
JT Quite so. It could only have been great to God in the sense of what was there, the king and those who humbled themselves; it never was greater in its history than at this moment.
PL It was all that was left of it.
JT Quite so. We have another book to tell us of the burial of this great city, but now it is great to God in view of Jonah’s preaching and what it effected.
Rem In two other places it is called “the great city”.
JT Yes. It is very like the world in reconciliation; it is great to God because of what is there potentially. It will soon become so odious to Him that He will bury it, but, for the moment, it is the gospel region and God is intensely interested in it in that respect.
PL So it stands in the light of the Lord’s three days’ journey which Jonah prefigures here.
JT We might also link it up with the thought of the peculiar treasure in the world. It is a great thing to see, and it ought to be in our minds in preaching, that it is not a judged world we are preaching to. “Go into all the world” — that is a moral thought — “and preach the glad tidings to all the creation” — the latter thought is that there is a link with God in all the creation. That is the attitude of our minds in preaching. Paul says, “In him we live and move and exist” (Acts 17:28); that is a world that is in favour provisionally. Jonah did not like the thought of forgiveness, he preached judgment; but God had more in His mind, and chapter 4 is to bring out that Jonah learnt that too — but before that he was not sympathetic with God as to grace.
PL Is it because you have to go out of sight to bring God in on this line that makes Jonah wrathful? The last verse of chapter 3 shows the way that God deals with souls in His grace — is that probably what Jonah resisted? You are lost in the magnificence of the message you render and God fills the vision of the soul. If a soul is blessed it is God who does it, the preacher is nothing in a certain sense. May that not have been, alas, a source of irritation?
JT Apparently it was here. It says, “And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil that he had said he would do unto them, and he did it not” — that was grace — but “it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry”. Afterwards Jonah learnt the lesson; he made no attempt, after God had finished speaking, to justify his point of view; that means, he had accepted God’s point of view.
PL I thought the contrast was, “Jesus Christ might display the whole long-suffering, for a delineation of those about to believe on him to life eternal” (1 Timothy 1:16). So the lifting up of hands is not in wrath, but in the dignity and grace of the dispensation. I was thinking of your reference to glory yesterday in this connection, the servant’s glory being to bring God in as supreme, so it is a savour of life unto life, as we were saying. In Jonah there was life, but Jonah’s state was not in agreement with that, there was no savour there.
JT Yes, Jonah would have had to hang his head and say, How unlike God I was; but when we come to the New Testament and read the epistles of Paul,
[p. 51] particularly those to the Corinthians, we see how the glory shone in him — life unto life.
HPW Jonah, in a sense, would say, I am not worth speaking about; I will just leave you with my God; like John the baptist, he was a voice of one crying in the wilderness — as if he wanted God to come straight out to the repentant soul.
JT Quite so. They sent to Jerusalem to make much of him, but, ‘No’, he says, ‘I am not fit to unloose His sandals’.
HPW A remarkable thing that a man should be allowed to make a straight path for God! — “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight his paths” (Matthew 3:3).
JT The contribution of Habakkuk is, of course, on higher ground. In the main, Jonah’s is an evangelical contribution, but Habakkuk refers more directly to the service of God, for he brings in intelligent contribution. Since the Reformation there has been a remarkable opening up of things evangelically but now we have a subsequent note, the chief Musician is brought in. Jonah does not use any instruments; Habakkuk does, and he tells us what they were. The first would point to elegy, something doleful, but it culminates in firm ground, and what he calls his “high places”, and God supports him there. I think we have reached a little of that.
HPW As found in separation with the Lord Jesus; He is the chief Musician, is He not?
JT I think the revival of the truth implies that Christ is everything and in all, that is, the fresh new man, in Colossians, is “renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him”. But Christ is everything in his affections, and in all; there is no room for anybody else in that phase of the new man. I think that enters into what we are saying as to the chief Musician, the whole matter is in His hands. How blessed to reach that in our assembly service;
the matter is in the Lord’s hands, He is the Minister of the sanctuary. That is what developed in the later revival of the truth.
PL So the doxology in Romans would attach rather more to the Jonah setting, while the postscript, alluding to the mystery and what is taken up in Colossians, would attach to Habakkuk.
JT Quite so. And then Ephesians is the completion — Glory to God in the assembly in Christ Jesus. The preposition there is a preposition of power, that is, it is in Christ Jesus. The matter is sure now, he looks at everything in Christ Jesus — “To him be glory in the assembly in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages” (Ephesians 3:21).
HPW The writer in Habakkuk is brought into the joy of the Lord in his own soul as adjusted through the discipline and then he is conscious that he is a contributor; then he acknowledges the chief Musician, but he still says, “on my stringed instruments”, but under the direction of the chief Musician. Is that it?
JT Yes, and I think the stringed instruments allude to the heavenly side. I do not think there are wind instruments used in heaven, no variable notes, but stringed instruments, involving intelligence. A wind instrument involves life, but a stringed instrument involves intelligence: the fingers are used, pointing to intelligence and skill in music.
B Were the latter what David had when he came before Saul?
JT Yes. Heaven is marked by supreme intelligence; a harp is the only kind of instrument mentioned as being used there. I suppose it is that kind of instrument that affords the working out of skill in music; that is what the Lord is helping us on in the assembly, “I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also” (1 Corinthians [p. 53] 14:15).
HPW I suppose a stringed instrument is one that constantly needs to be kept in tune, unlike a wind instrument.
JT I do not know much about it, but I can see the manipulation of the strings must require skill to give the right harmony in touch; they naturally weaken in their use.
HPW I was only thinking of our own state of soul, how constantly we need to be kept in touch with the chief Musician, otherwise the note seems to lose its tone.
JT Yes, we must come under Him now. I believe the Lord is greatly helping us on those lines, to get the minds of the saints right and their affections, as to what is proper to the assembly.
As regards Malachi, the Spirit of God through him maintains the link. Of course, the subject might be carried right through from David to Malachi.
PL “We hanged our harps upon the willows” (Psalm 137:2). There is sensitiveness there; they would not use their harps in Babylon; they preserved them in confidence that they would come into use as the fruit of the great revival.
JT That is the idea, I think. They would not sing the songs of Zion in a strange land. The Songs of Degrees would be that they are on the way back where they belong.
PL It would be more a rallying of the saints in a military setting when they go back and build. It says the instruments of David were taken up when the choirs began to move in Nehemiah; would that be an upward movement as they come into something choice?
JT Quite so. The Spirit seems to keep a link in Malachi; although it is less exuberant, yet it is there. “Then they that feared Jehovah spoke often one to another; and Jehovah observed it, and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before him for [p. 54] them that feared Jehovah, and that thought upon his name. And they shall be unto me a peculiar treasure, saith Jehovah of hosts, in the day that I prepare”. Now, what does that “prepare” mean? That is the great day when God is carrying out what is before Him. “And I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him”. So that we have the suggestion of Exodus 4, the thought of sonship, carried on to the last book.
PL While the music is not emphasised, the dignity of the musicians is — they are sons.
JT Quite so.
Ques Habakkuk is marked by being able to see things; would that help in regard to the skilful touch on the stringed instruments applying to our day?
JT Quite so, he is able to see things and give an account of what he saw.
Ques Can you connect Peter showing how the government of God results in an issue for God, with Jonah; and then Paul more with Habakkuk’s line; and would John suggest sonship and the persons here?
JT Well, I was going to say Malachi is the persons. John 4 is the Father seeking the persons, not the worship, but the persons who worship, and the persons are here; so Malachi brings in “his own son that serveth him”. We were speaking the other day about preparing; whatever we do Godward or manward, it is not simply the thing that is done, but the person who does it. That is the force of “prepare”, I think, in these connections.